


what keeps you

by dustofwarfare



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Angst, Canon Typical Violence, Disturbing Themes, Disturbing dreams, Fire Emblem: Three Houses Golden Deer Route Spoilers, Grief and Loss, Happy Ending, M/M, Necromancy, Nightmares, Post-Timeskip | War Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Pre-Time Skip, References to hunting, Sexual Situations, Supernatural Elements, Violence, War, black magic, brief mention of vomiting, character comes back from the dead all wrong, consensual pre-ts sex, desperate choices, disturbing imagery relating to war, ending material mimics current-day historical documents referencing the long-ago past, major character death that isn't permanent, making up lore, mishmash of death mythologies, other character has to deal with it, really - Freeform, resurrection magic gone awry, spoilers for all routes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:15:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27316867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustofwarfare/pseuds/dustofwarfare
Summary: When Felix falls in the final battle against Nemesis, Claude isn't ready to let him go. He takes a trip down to Shambhala, determined to use the same magic on Felix that Thales used on Nemesis to bring his beloved back from the dead.It works, but not without a price.(Fodlan Frights Fic Exchange 2020)
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Claude von Riegan
Comments: 9
Kudos: 60
Collections: Fodlan Frights Halloween Exchange 2020





	what keeps you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [timehopper](https://archiveofourown.org/users/timehopper/gifts).



> This was written for the Fodlan Frights Fic Exchange! I had an amazing prompt, which was _Necromancy - Character A loses Character B during the war and desperately wants them back. Anything goes as long as it's creepy and a little bit messed up! Bonus points for B Coming Back Wrong or, if sentient, being really messed up about the resurrection._
> 
> This fic does have a happy ending, but please mind the tags! Also, the tag referencing "modern faux-historical documents" is just an encyclopedia entry set in a far future about King Khalid I of Almyra's life, reign, and death after a long life. It will make sense, I promise, but I did want to mention it. This fic contains consensual sex (including pre-ts), some disturbing imagery, death, war, the usual. Please take note if you're sensitive to any of the tags. There's nothing graphic but it's there. It's a horror fic exchange, but I swear it's a happy ending. 
> 
> Timehopper, thank you so much for requesting this, I had a wonderful time writing this fic and I hope it's what you wanted -- and I LOVE that I was able to write Claudelix for you! Happy Spooky Halloween! 
> 
> (title is from Euripedes' Alcestis: _"I see him there at the oars of his little boat in the lake, the ferryman of the dead, Kharon, with his hand upon the oar and he calls me now. ‘What keeps you? Hurry, you hold us back.’ He is urging me on in angry impatience."_ )

Felix Fraldarius transfers into Claude von Riegan’s house at the beginning of Garland Moon, supposedly after a fight with several of his classmates. Claude’s not sure of the details, because the Faerghus kids stick close together and honestly, even their fights are tense; all harsh whispers and pointed stares around a tight huddle. 

Either way, he smiles when Felix introduces himself, stiffly, eyes sliding from Claude’s gaze like water. He thinks Felix probably regrets his decision, but then again, it’s not like it really matters. At the end of the day, this is only for a year, isn’t it? Felix can spar with Leonie and be lectured about his poor dessert opinions by Lysithea, and then when they graduate, go back to his cold castle by the sea or whatever in Fraldarius, and make up with his friends for whatever sent him to Claude’s house in a huff. 

And Felix isn’t a bad fit in the Golden Deer, not really. He’s not sociable but he’s less irascible than Lysithea, and after Leonie drops him in a trap and stands around pointing and laughing at him, he seems to take himself maybe a _fraction_ of an iota less seriously. Claude grew up sparring with his mother, who they call _Wielder of the Demon Blade_ , but he never could get into swords as much as bows. But Felix, he fights a bit like Queen Tiana; all fast feet and pointed movements, but _unlike_ Claude’s mom, he doesn’t gloat nearly as much as when he wins. 

Felix is, Claude discovers, a lot like his favorite weapon; sharp, to the point, requires very little maintenance other than a thorough cleaning every now and then. He listens on the battlefield, doesn’t argue with Claude in class and Claude’s even caught him rolling his eyes once or twice at Lorenz. 

By the time Ethereal Moon rolls around, it feels like he’s been in their house since the year started. He doesn’t exactly open up, but he stops glaring over at his old classmates’ table in the dining hall, and Claude sees him sparring with Ingrid sometimes, or sharing a library table with Sylvain and Ashe. Claude even sees him talking with the Prince of Faerghus once by the fishing pond, though Felix’s face looks shuttered and cold when he turns to leave, heading straight for the training pitch while Dimitri watches him go. 

Claude’s sure they’ll work it out. Maybe some time untangled from the complex web of duty that makes up his life in Faerghus will do him well. And Claude can’t help but think that once this year ends and they all go their separate ways, it might be useful to have a friend who’s a high-ranking noble in the Kingdom of Faerghus. It can only help his plans, in the end. 

***  
During the Grand Ball in Ethereal Moon, Claude smiles politely and dances with several of his classmates -- Hilda’s his favorite because she’s the most fun, Edelgard talks about politics and looks annoyed when he tries to flirt with her, and Dimitri steps on his feet and stammers out a hasty apology before offering to bring him some punch. Lorenz fights him for who gets to lead, and Lysithea won’t hear of dancing until Claude brings her cake with enough icing that it makes _his_ teeth hurt to look at it. 

Felix blinks at him when Claude offers his hand, scowls, and then surprises Claude by letting himself be pulled onto the dance floor. He lets Claude lead, and he’s a better dancer than Claude expects, because while Felix has excellent footwork usually people as tense as he always is don’t make for very good dancers. But he even smiles a little, and Claude wonders idly what might happen if he tried to kiss Felix. 

So after the ball, Claude knocks on his door -- they _are_ neighbors -- and asks to borrow a book. Felix lets him into his very neat room, and when he closes the door, Claude pushes him gently against it and decides to just try it and see. 

Felix kisses him back. He’s not quite as good at it as he is swordplay or even dancing, but then again, neither is Claude. They figure it out. Claude finds out Felix’s hair is just as impossible and stubborn as the rest of him, and that he likes how Felix’s callused fingers feel on the back of his neck when he slides his hand there, drawing Claude in close.

His mouth is warm and tastes like ginger, like the punch at the ball. 

***  
Felix thinks it’s funny how much Claude hates the snow and the cold. Claude thinks it’s funny how Felix can’t handle the steam of the sauna. 

“I don’t know why you like the heat so much,” Felix grouses, as Claude bundles up in one of Felix’s fur coats under the covers of Felix’s narrow bed. “Derdriu isn’t that hot, is it?” 

“Nah, it’s pretty temperate. I don’t get why _you_ like the cold so much. Fraldarius is on the sea, that’s cheating, it should be _warm_.” 

“Yeah, no. I used to open my windows during the first snow and lie there on my bed, letting it snow on me.” Felix is sitting on the edge of his bed, polishing his sword. Literally polishing an actual sword. He does that a lot. “But it’s still not as cold as Gautier. That’s _cold_.” 

Almyra is hot, even when the rains come in the high summer and the scent of petrichor is thick in the air of the capital, steam rising from the stones as the water evaporates on impact. But Claude isn’t going to tell Felix about Almyra. This thing with them, it’s fun, easy, and it feels good. It’s the kind of distraction Claude should have, in school, before he goes home and the duties of the Alliance -- and then the crown -- take up his time. 

But trust doesn’t come easy to him. And from the way Felix still watches Dimitri, sometimes, disappointment and anger and something inexplicably fond etched on his sharp features, Claude thinks he probably understands that better than most. It’s the hardest to trust someone when it’s already been broken, Claude knows that for sure. He’s trusted the wrong people back at home, who tried slipping poison in his food just because they didn’t like him being half-Fodlan. 

Maybe before the year ends, they can tell each other the truths they’re holding back; Claude, who he really is, and Felix, why he really left. 

***  
They fuck the first time after the Saint Seiros Day feast in Guardian Moon. It’s messy, far more awkward than kissing or anything else they’ve done so far, but they figure it out eventually. Claude likes being pinned under Felix’s weight, the sound of Felix’s harsh breathing, the way it feels so hot against his skin. He likes the way pleasure fuzzes his mind into relaxing for a little while, too. Lately Claude’s been caught by a feeling of dread, the sort that doesn’t have a purpose or a reason, vague and indistinct and more troubling because of it. 

But he doesn’t need to worry about anything, trapped in the furs with Felix on his back, his own hand shoved beneath himself and stroking his cock in time with Felix’s thrusts. Or when it’s him, on his back, Felix’s dark hair spilling like ink on his fair skin, the moonlight making his eyes glow like a cat while he slowly rides Claude, biting his own lip, as quiet in his pleasure as he is with everything else. 

“I didn’t think this would happen, you know,” Felix says, later, when they’ve changed the soiled sheets and are tangled together in the bed that’s only just big enough for them both. “When I transferred.” 

“It wasn’t my good looks and charm that brought you here in the first place? Is that what you’re saying?” 

“No, it was the professor,” says Felix, blunt as ever. “But you’re. All right.” 

“High praise,” says Claude, and smiles in the dark. “You’re not bad, yourself.” 

“Thanks,” says Felix, and kisses him. 

Outside, it starts to snow. 

***  
During one of their free weekends, Claude finds a rare sword in one of the town shops -- made by the famed blacksmith Zoltan, though it’s in poor condition and in dire need of repair. He scrounges around his belongings until he finds one of the rings his mother sent with him, in case he needed to sell the jewels to get home in a hurry if something happened. 

Next month will be the end of his time here, and Claude figures it’s safe enough to pry out a ruby and sell it for some Fodlan gold. He uses that to pay for repairs on the sword, and it’s worth every penny when he gives it to Felix for his birthday -- polished to a shine, sharpened and the hilt repaired, with a brand-new engraving Claude chose himself. 

It’s about as excited as Claude’s ever _seen_ Felix. He grins and kisses Claude, then exclaims over the sword enough that Claude feels pretty pleased with himself for finding it _and_ a little jealous. 

“What’s this?” Felix asks, running his fingers over the hilt. “This script on the engraving? I don’t recognize it.” 

“Huh, don’t know,” says Claude, who knows very well what it is because he’s the one who paid to have it engraved there. 

It’s Almyran, and it reads, _aim true, strike through the heart._

Maybe one day, he thinks, as Felix topples him back on the bed and starts to take off Claude’s pants, he’ll be able to tell Felix what those words mean. Some day in the far future, when Claude will sit on the throne of Almyra, called by his true name, and Felix will duke in Fraldarius, serving his king without rancor. 

Or maybe it will stay a secret, and this will be a thing they both look back on fondly but with no real purpose other than recollection. Claude in the desert heat, Felix staring across the cold ocean, not knowing the truth of what lies just beyond. 

***  
A week later, Edelgard declares war on the Church and all of Claude’s plans fall like the summer rain in Almyra, turning into mist the second it hits the ground, drifting away like smoke. 

***  
Claude, who spends five years running interference for the Alliance with the weight of his new title behind him, hears news of Felix, sometimes. He’s fighting against Cornelia alongside his father and the other nobles who opposed her coup, for the memory of his fallen king, executed in Fhirdiad. 

He receives the occasional letter; stilted, awkward as Felix always is in conversation, written or otherwise, but enough that Claude knows he’s still alive. He’s glad about it, more than he wants to admit, even though it’s been years since they’ve seen each other. He still thinks about those nights at Garreg Mach, before war tore the continent apart. He’s in Goneril with Lorenz when the first snow of the year comes, and he realizes with a pang that it is the twentieth of Pegasus Moon -- Felix’s birthday. 

He wonders if Felix still has the sword Claude gave him, and hopes that he does. That even if he can’t read the words Claude engraved on the hilt, that all his strikes still find their way to the heart, his own left unwounded and whole. 

***  
Claude is a little surprised when Felix comes back to Garreg Mach, fighting alongside his old classmates and their newly-returned professor. 

He still has the sword. Claude sees him sometimes, rubbing his thumb over the engraving. He still doesn’t tell Felix what it says, even when the last king of Faerghus falls in truth at Gronder, and Felix weeps in Claude’s arms that night, telling him at last what haunted Dimitri, what drove Felix away from his house and to Claude’s, all those years ago. 

“I couldn’t make anyone listen, or believe me,” Felix sobs, tears hot on Claude’s neck. “That he was. That he was wrong, somehow. That he came back from Duscur...cursed by the ghosts of his father, my brother. I wanted him to stop pretending it was. It was all right when it _wasn’t_. I knew he was fucked up and angry, I just hated watching him pretend like he wasn’t. Like he felt nothing.” 

Felix is dry-eyed in the morning, resolute and determined to make sure Dimitri’s death is avenged. When they march on Enbarr he is like a demon, cutting down any and all who stand in his way, fierce like one of the stories from his homeland, the one Claude’s mother used to tell him about clockwork soldiers who came alive only to kill, the spirit of war filling them up where blood and bone and a heart should be. 

Felix is there at Claude’s side when Edelgard falls in Enbarr to Byleth’s wicked sword. He’s there beside Claude in Shambhala, when Lysithea -- incandescent in her rage -- uses her dark magic to take down Thales. He is fierce and strong and so loyal that Claude doesn’t know how he will ever thank him, this displaced Faerghan noble who came to him, so unexpected, a gift. 

The night before their final battle against Nemesis’ army, Claude watches him clean his favorite sword, run his fingers over the words inscribed there. 

“Did you ever figure out what it means?” 

Felix glances up at him. His face is more angular than it was when they were younger, but who among them escaped five years of war without being sharpened like a blade against a whetstone? “I haven’t,” he says, smiling just a bit. “But you know, don’t you.” 

“You seem so sure of that, Felix.” Claude tilts his head. “Maybe I do, maybe I don’t.” 

“You do,” Felix says, again. “Are you going to tell me?” 

Claude looks out of the window. It’s the end of Verdant Rain Moon, and the weather knows it; it’s been raining all day, a slow drizzle that’s going to make their march miserable, probably. Turn the battlefield swampy, the air thick with heat. But then it will be over, and Claude can ask the question he’s been stopping himself from asking for weeks, now. 

_How about you just come home with me, to Almyra, and I’ll teach you how to read that yourself?_

He looks at Felix, thinks about the gift this man’s given him -- loyalty, the kind Claude has always yearned for, in the secret places of his own guarded heart. “I’ll tell you tomorrow,” he says. “When it’s all over.” 

“When it’s over,” says Felix, and smiles. 

Outside, thunder rumbles, lazy and distant. 

***  
The smell of brackish water is thick and cloying as the skies finally clear, the sun finally shines, and the fog finally lifts off the battlefield. 

And then Claude -- triumphant and victorious -- turns to see Felix lying dead on the ground behind him, fingers still curled around the sword Claude gave him, his sightless eyes staring up at a sky now burning-blue. A sky who will break tomorrow with a new dawn for Fodlan, a new dawn that Felix will never see. 

In Felix’s heart is an arrow shot from the Elite Riegan’s bow, meant for Claude. Even though it never pierced his skin, Claude feels it there all the same. 

***  
When Fodlan’s new dawn comes, Claude von Riegan is already gone, slipping away and leaving behind his dukedom, his name, his friends, his army. He leaves alone on his wyvern, heading not for the land of Star and Flame, but the crumbled city of Shambhala near the outskirts of Hrym. 

He takes nothing but a sword that isn’t his, and a body cleaned and wrapped carefully in linens, though even now starting to rot. He doesn’t have much time. But Claude will be damned if he gave five years of his life to war, fought a ghost only so the man he loves could become one himself. Grief drives all sense from his head, and all he can see in the space behind his eyes is Felix, lying dead on the ground because he believed in Claude, fought for him, loved him. 

Shambhala is a vast city. Claude finds a small enclave full of the very young and the very old, deep down where the light doesn’t reach. He finds one of their mages, pins him against a damp stone wall with his sword at his throat and says, “Tell me how it worked. How you made the Fell King return.” 

The mage is just a man, afraid, dark-eyed and yet he does not cower or plead. “We told Thales it was cursed magic, and behold how it brought us ruin. I have no quarrel with you, soldier of Fodlan. Leave me and mine alone, and let our unholy magic die with us.” 

“I will,” Claude promises. “If you just. Just tell me how you did it.” His blade -- _Felix’s_ \-- lowers a bit, and rests at the mage’s heart. Claude rubs his thumb over the Almyran etched there, the words, the promise. 

“You can kill me,” the mage says. “I will die to keep the world safe from it. You did us a favor when you took Thales and his sickened magic from us. We will not oppose you. Your grief is strong, but it will fade. Do not do this. Let this profane magic die with me.” 

Claude feels wild, unhinged. He sees Felix’s body at his feed, the stains seeping through the linen. He can’t -- he can’t. But the truth is there, in the mage’s eyes. He will not tell Claude the secret magic. A man willing to die to keep a secret is the hardest foe of all to vanquish. 

“...Papa?” 

Claude turns. There, standing near one of the doorways lit by whatever magic brings light down in the dark, is a small child of six or so. She blinks big eyes up at Claude. 

“No,” the mage breathes, as Claude steps back and drops the tip of his sword, pointing it somewhere else, at someone else’s heart, hating himself and unable to stop. “Please, don’t.” 

“Tell me,” says Claude. “Just once. I promise you. I will leave. See to it you are safe. But if you don’t tell me, I’ll. Do this. I will.” He feels sick, disgusted, but he knows he means it. “And I’ll tell the others. They won’t care that you didn’t all support Thales. He tore children open and left them dying and screaming their agony in the dark. They’ll come here, they’ll do the same to all of you. I’ll do it, starting with this one.” 

The mage says, “I will tell you. But you will think back on this, and wish you never came here.” 

Claude lowers the sword, and the mage gathers the little girl to him, holding her tight while she cries. “Show me how it’s done.” 

And so the mage takes Claude down to the ruins, and does. 

***  
“How long?” Claude asks, when the dark work is behind him and he’s holding Felix’s funeral shroud, empty, in hands that tremble with grief and exhaustion. 

The mage will not meet his eyes. “It is said no less than three nights, no more than nine. Thales began the ritual of resurrection four days before your army came. If it is less than three nights, all that will return to you is a ghost and you will never be free of it. More than nine nights, nothing will come but ill-luck and your own death, a trapped existence on the Shores of Eternity.” 

Great. “How do I know which it will be?” 

“You won’t,” says the mage. “Until you do.” 

***  
Claude burns the empty soiled linen that night, at a fire he started in his solitary camp near a river. 

He washes his hands, over and over, even though they’re clean. He wonders if they are celebrating in Garreg Mach. If Rhea still lives. Why he can’t think past the haze of grief, if he should just. Forget this, and go. It’s not too late. 

But of course he doesn’t leave. He owes it to Felix, to the poor little girl he frightened, to see this through. 

That night he dreams he is standing alone on a beach of black sand and cold water the color of a winter’s sky. The roar is so loud it hurts his ears. 

A figure stands on the beach, an outline of a man. Claude knows the shape of him, and heads toward him. The figure flickers in and out, like a shadow, like moonlight suffocated by clouds.

“Felix,” Claude calls, and starts to run. 

The figure turns. As Claude runs toward him, the sky above begins to shake, and it starts to rain. The sand turns to mud beneath his feet. Hands reach up, shrieks fill the sky like thunder, and the rain is too thick to be water, sticky and congealed like old blood. 

Hands grab at his ankles, trying to pull him down into the sucking mud. Claude kicks them off, keeps trying to run. 

The figure moves farther away, the rain comes thicker and heavier until Claude can taste it in his mouth, copper-sweet. The sounds of the damned are the roar of the sea, and the water itself has turned crimson, crashing on black shores of rot and ruin. 

“Felix!” he calls, desperate and anguished. 

The figure turns toward him. There’s an arrow in one side of his chest, coming out of the other. Features flash suddenly over the indistinct shade, an echo of how Felix looked, when Claude put him in the tomb. Skin waxen and cold, starting to rot. Eyes glazed and clouded, lips pulling back in a snarl. 

“What did you do?” the thing demands. “ _What did you do_?” 

“I,” Claude starts, but the figure flickers again, moves down the beach, turns back into nothing but an outline where a man used to be. “No! Felix, please, I --” 

The waves get louder, the rain falls harder, and Claude wakes with a start next to a soaked fire. He’s lying on his back in the rain next to the river, and the water is filling his mouth, choking him. 

***  
He dreams the same dream for three nights straight, and wakes up outside his tent, on his back, in the rain every morning. 

Each time, the figure of the man he loves rots into bones, until it’s only a skeleton there, pointing at Claude with an accusing finger, and then it crumbles and turns into dust at his feet. 

***

The fourth night, Claude dreams he is in a hallway. It stretches endlessly out before him, both directions fading into shadow. 

The door in front of him is unremarkable. Simple. Black, with a silver doorknob. 

The door starts to open. Something clatters and lands at his feet. 

He waits, but the door does not open further, it’s just a crack. So he bends down, finds what was given, holds two small pieces of silver in his hand. Even in the dream he can feel the weight of them against his palm, burning. 

The door slams open, and beyond it, Claude can just make out what appears to be the bank of a river, choked with weeds. A shrouded figure stands there, waiting, hand outstretched. There is a boat behind him, unmoored and waiting. 

“I don’t understand,” Claude says. 

The door slams shut. The sound of it echoes like thunder.

***

Claude wakes up before dawn, and for the first time since he made camp and burned Felix’s funeral shroud, he’s still in his tent and there’s no sound of rain. 

His fingers on his left hand are clenched tight and cramping, fingers digging into his palm. He opens his hand. 

There are two silver coins pressed there, with faded etchings that look like a skull grinning at him from under a shroud, a curved scythe just visible above. 

His tent is open though it wasn’t when he woke up. It’s been turned to face the river, which lies there waiting. There is a boat there, silent and unmoored, bobbing gently in the water near the bank. 

Claude gets out of the tent, the coins held tight in his hand. There is no sight of a shrouded man, but somehow, Claude knows he is there all the same. He stands near the boat -- as close as he can get without screaming -- and closes his eyes, holds his hand out, turns his palm over. Opens it, and feels the coins drop. 

When he opens his eyes, the boat is moving down the river toward the east. It disappears just as the sun begins to rise, dawn blooming blood-red on the horizon. 

***  
The fifth night, he dreams of a deer in the forest running from a fire. He sees himself, standing near his tent, laughing. 

There’s something behind him. It’s laughing, too. 

The deer is caught and torn apart, blood and entrails dripping into a sizzling fire. Every hunter knows you have to bleed a deer before you eat it, remove its organs. This slaughtered thing is burning just to burn. 

***  
In the morning, Claude finds a pair of antlers sitting atop a cold fire full of ash. 

They won’t burn. 

***  
The sixth night, Claude wakes from a dream he does not remember to the sound of a storm, rain lashing the tent. When he opens the flap, the night is quiet, still and clear. 

He goes back into the tent, closes the flap, and listens to the thunder, the wind. The rain seeping in and turning the ground beneath him wet. 

In the morning, the ground is dry as bone. 

***  
The seventh night, something throws rocks at his tent. Over and over until he nearly goes mad with it. There is nothing there. 

Claude cannot taste his food. His dreams pull him under like a tide, heavy things, and he wakes sobbing without knowing what they were.

But he stands at the river where he watched the boat drift, and says, “You won’t scare me.” 

Nothing but the wind answers. 

***  
The eighth night, he dreams of a red door. It is lit up cold and bright, the only spot of color in a thick dark void of nothing. It starts to open. 

Terror grips him around the throat like a noose. The sense of wrongness feels heavy and oppressive, and he knows, with a clarity as bright as the light framing the door, that he should not have done this thing. “Wait,” Claude says, as the door opens, quiet, inexorable. “Wait, I --” 

“Too late,” Felix says, behind him. 

Claude whirls around, but there is no one there. Just the dark. 

The red door in front of him closes, and then is gone. He knows he will not see it again. 

***  
On the ninth morning, Claude leaves his tent to see Felix sitting by the fire, cleaning his sword. The one Claude left with him, back in that tomb in Shambhala. 

He looks up. “You slept late.” 

Claude meets Felix’s eyes and can’t find his breath. This is Felix, from the battle-worn boots to the tunic to the messy ponytail that only just manages to curtail his ridiculous hair. His eyes are the same bright amber, and the fingers that work over his blade are steady and sure. 

The blade he’s cleaning is filthy with old, dried blood. It was clean as a whistle when Claude put it in the tomb. 

“I,” Claude says. “How are you...feeling.” 

“I’m fine. Do you want breakfast?” Felix nods over to the fire. It’s blazing along merrily, and there’s meat on skewers cooking over the flame. “I cooked the last of the deer.” 

Chills race up Claude’s spine. “The last of the...deer?” 

“The one you killed,” Felix says, and points. 

Claude doesn’t want to look away, but he does. He sees the remains of a deer hanging up between two trees -- it’s been cleaned properly, as he was taught when he was younger and learned to hunt in the pine forests in the north of Almyra. 

He’s pretty sure he didn’t kill a deer. There was only the one in his dream that was butchered and bloody, unfit to eat. But Claude says, weakly, “Sure, that sounds great,” and goes to take the skewers from the fire. He returns and sits next to Felix. 

He hands over one of the skewers. Felix takes it, sets the sword down, and starts pulling the meat off with his fingers. 

His fingers, which are still bloody. The meat, which is too hot to touch. 

“You should clean your hands,” Claude says, catching Felix’s wrist. He wants to ask. He will not. Felix is alive. But his skin is cold as ice, and Claude thinks he might scream if he sees Felix eat with his fingers like. Like that. 

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” Felix says, like he used to say everything, matter-of-fact and practical. He slides the venison in his mouth, held between his bloody fingers, and Claude can’t watch. 

“Are you angry at me,” Claude asks, softly, when he can look back at him. 

Felix shrugs. “Again. It doesn’t really matter. You should eat. Meat doesn’t taste very good when it’s cold.” 

Claude eats three pieces of venison. Then he leaves Felix cleaning his sword by the fire, and goes into the forest to throw it all back up. 

***  
Felix’s sword is clean, the camp packed up, when they encounter their first problem. 

Claude’s wyvern shrieks the second she gets a look at Felix, rising up on her hindlegs, shaking her horns and flaring her wings. 

Felix stands there, quietly. His hands are clean, but it doesn’t matter, that’s not what has Altaira in such a tizzy. He says nothing while Claude cajoles his wyvern, attempts to soothe her. He tries to have Felix give her a treat, but she won’t have anything to do with Felix, no matter what. 

Finally, Claude speaks to her in Almyran, gives her the command to go home to the royal aerie. He watches with an aching heart as his beloved wyvern he raised from a hatchling takes the sky, shrieking, and disappears without him. 

Claude turns to Felix. “I, uh. Looks like we might be walking for a bit.” 

Felix says nothing, just picks up his pack ( _where did he get any of that?_ ) and starts to walk. 

***  
When they stop for the night, Claude takes the tent from his pack and goes to set it up. 

“No,” says Felix. “Don’t.” 

Claude thinks about the underground tomb where he left Felix and says, “All right.” He spreads their bedrolls out near the fire, under the clear sky. 

“You haven’t touched me,” Felix says. “Since this morning when you touched my wrist.” 

_I’m afraid of what you are,_ Claude thinks. What he says is, “I thought maybe you needed time.” 

Felix laughs, and the hair on Claude’s neck and arms raise at the sound. “I had time. An eternity.” 

Claude rolls over, looks at him there, staring up at the sky. “What was it like, where you were?” 

Felix turns to look at Claude, just as he used to do, in the bed they shared at Garreg Mach. But there’s something wrong with his eyes. They look as empty as they did that morning in the swamp, lightless like flat paper colored with an amber crayon. “It was fine. And then it wasn’t.” 

“Did you -- see, anyone?” 

“Yes,” says Felix, and turns away. “Go to sleep, Claude. We have a long way to go.” 

Claude isn’t sure how he will ever sleep again.

***  
It’s better in the morning, with the sun bright as they make their way out of the mountains. Warmer during the day, with the sun bright enough that Claude ties his hair back with a scarf. 

Felix, who hates the heat, stays swaddled in his furs, and does not sweat. 

He was never overly gregarious, Felix. They spent a lot of time together during the war on marches, but it was always Claude who chattered, filled the silences with silly stories or plans or tried to badger Felix into singing, sometimes. 

Felix never sang, then. And Claude doesn’t want to hear any song he might sing, now. 

So they walk mostly in silence, and Claude ignores how the animals that should be there aren’t, and yet, how every time Felix wanders into the woods to find something to eat, he comes back with something dead. Something he’s killed. Something whose blood stains his sword. 

***  
Nights are the worst. 

Claude discovers that Felix does sleep, on the third night after he came back. He sleeps but it’s not restless, and he talks in a way he never did, when he was ali--

 _Before_. 

And when he talks in his sleep, tormented by his restless dreams, he sounds like _Felix_. Claude’s Felix, the one who kissed Claude before the battle against Nemesis and said, only, “I love you. Don’t die.” 

“Please, no, no, don’t -- please, it hurts, it hurts --” Felix, begging in a broken voice, sobbing. “Dimitri, help me, don’t let -- don’t it take me, I want to stay, I want to _stay_ \--” 

He’s thrashing in his blankets, twisted up in them, fingers tearing at his hair. 

“Felix,” Claude says, rolling over, putting a careful hand on his shoulder. 

“Tighter, hold tighter, I can’t -- don’t make me leave, I --” 

“Felix,” Claude says, louder, shaking him. 

All at once, the thrashing stops. Felix goes still, and Claude thinks of him on the back of his wyvern on the way to Shambhala, still and wrapped in linen. Deadweight. 

“What,” says Felix, in a different voice. 

_Deadweight._

“You were dreaming,” says Claude. 

“No, I wasn’t dreaming,” Felix says, and there’s at least some hint of emotion there now, finally, deep and endless -- like the rage in Lysithea’s voice when she cast her dark spikes at Thales. Like the sorrow he heard in Edelgard’s, when she transformed in her final moments into something monstrous, desperate. “I was. _Remembering._ ” 

Claude wonders which is worse; saying sorry and meaning it, or meaning it and not saying it at all. 

***  
“Whose blood was it,” Claude asks, later, when they huddle under a tarp to stay out of the rain. The tarp is the tent that Felix won’t sleep in, cut into pieces to be strung up between trees. It’s a miserable shelter, with the rain blowing in from all sides, and Felix gives off no heat, seems unmoved by the cold, the rain. 

“I don’t know,” Felix says. “They were there when I woke up.” 

“Did they try and hurt you,” Claude asks, thinking about his promise to the mage who helped him, his daughter, the others hiding in the ruins of the city. All dead, now. Maybe. “Is that why?” 

Felix doesn’t answer. 

Claude doesn’t ask again. 

***  
There’s a small town on the outskirts of the Hrym mountains. It’s nothing much; a tavern, an inn, a stable for horses. The horses whinny and neigh when he and Felix walk by, and Claude half-expects the people to do the same, but they don’t. They’re tired from years of war, maybe loyal to the Empire, maybe not. Either way they don’t notice anything off about Felix, and that’s at least something. 

Claude pays for a room in the inn, and a bath, and a proper meal. The inn is comfortable and they sleep in the same bed, but so far apart they might as well be in separate rooms. Felix still talks, loud and anguished, twisting himself up in the sheets like he’s climbing back in that shroud Claude wrapped him up in. 

_I want to stay hold tighter Dimitri don’t let go don’t let go no Glenn please don’t oh Father I’m sorry don’t make me go I want to stay --_

He doesn’t wake Felix up from these dreams, not anymore. Just waits for the sun to rise and Felix to go still beside him, as he always does at first light. Then Claude gets a few hours sleep, if he can. He’s too tired to dream. 

That night, as he listens to Felix beg to be left alone in death with those he loved and who loved him enough to let him go when he needed to, Claude wonders if he counted the days wrong, and this is his ill-luck after all. 

***  
“Do you want to go back?” Claude asks, when they set out again. Felix turns to look at him, pale and untouched by the elements, which are turning cold again as they move further into Horsebow Moon. “To Fraldarius,” he says, though they both know that’s not what he means. 

Felix walks up to him, and for the first time since he came back, he reaches out and touches the side of Claude’s face. His fingers are so cold, like ice, even though the scruff of Claude’s beard. “Why did you bring me back, to leave me again?” 

“Maybe you liked it there,” Claude says. His eyes grow hot. He misses Felix like an ache all the time, and it hasn’t stopped, not one second, even though Claude has something that looks like Felix, sounds like him, standing right in front of him. “And because you know I shouldn’t have done it. I just missed you, so much.” 

Felix says, “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m here.” 

“Your dreams,” Claude says, softly. “They’re terrible to listen to. You wanted -- you didn’t want to leave. I brought you back and you didn’t want me to. You wanted to stay and I ripped you away, tore you out of death because I couldn’t let you go when I should have.” 

Felix doesn’t smile, but he wouldn’t have, even before. He says, instead, “Yes. You should have. But you didn’t, and now, here I am.” 

It’s so exactly what Felix would say that Claude _laughs_. “Right. You’ll come with me, then, to Almyra?” 

“Yes. You were going to ask me to go with you, if I hadn't...if. I was going to say yes,” Felix says, calm as ever, as Claude’s heart aches for the future they lost to an arrow, fired by another desperate ghost of someone who probably only wanted to stay dead.

***  
That night, out under the stars, Claude kisses Felix for the first time. He’s almost as nervous as that first time, after the Grand Ball. 

Felix’s mouth is cool, and there’s a strange, faint metallic tang that is nothing like how Felix used to taste. It’s like licking a silver sword.

( _A silver coin_.) 

But Felix doesn’t pull away, and is in fact eager for it, grabbing at Claude, pulling him down on top of him like he’s trying to burrow inside of him. “You’re so warm,” Felix says, rubbing his face all over Claude’s bare chest. His eyes have that burn to them again, a red banked flame like Nemesis’ had, in the battle. 

“I thought you could handle the cold,” Claude teases, running his hands up and down Felix’s muscular, scarred back. His fingers stroke over a puckered scar that’s not yet slivered, and he realizes with a sick lurch that it’s from the arrow that felled him. He won’t let himself pull away, though, and draws his other hand up, over the matching wound on his chest. 

“This is a different kind of cold,” says Felix, staring down at him while Claude touches the spot on his chest above his heart. It doesn’t beat, but Claude’s pretending not to notice. 

“I’m sorry I didn’t save you,” Claude says. 

“I didn’t mind dying for you,” Felix says, like they’re talking about the weather. “You gave me something to fight for. Something to believe in. I didn’t do it out of duty. That’s all I ever wanted. A king worthy of serving.” 

“You didn’t know I was a king -- or, well, a prince -- then. In fact, I don’t think I’ve even told you, now,” Claude says, touching his face, the familiar sharp cheekbones. Felix’s hair, which feels the same even if very little else about him does. 

“I knew it in the space between.” Felix kisses him. “The thing that brought me back. It rots from the inside out, Claude, if you. Speak of it. Try not to do that or it will burn me away. What there is, of me, in here.” 

“What will?” Claude asks, fascinated, his natural curiosity returning after the shock of the last few weeks has started to thaw. 

“You know,” Felix says, and kisses him with his cold mouth. “You know what it is. You’re a soldier. You’ve seen it before.” 

Felix’s skin does warm, gradually, as they touch each other there in the dark. When Claude takes him that night beneath the stars, the inside of his body isn’t cold at all -- it’s hot, too hot, like a fire. 

When Claude kisses the scar from the arrow on Felix’s chest, he says, “You said you didn’t hate dying for me, but. Do you hate me for making you live after you did it?” 

“I think, yes. But if anyone could change my mind, I guess it would be you,” Felix says, and there’s a hint of his old sly wicked humor there, somewhere. 

It’s enough for now. Maybe. It will have to be. 

***  
They’re near the Throat when the bandits come. 

Claude gets the silver bow he picked up at their last stop for supplies, but before he can even string up an arrow and aim it, they’re all dead. Felix has always been an exemplary swordsman, but this is like watching Death itself wield a blade. 

_Because that’s what he is._. 

When Felix’s crest flares, Claude nearly snaps himself in the face with his bowstring. He’s seen Felix’s crest before, of course. But this isn’t it. For one, it’s the color of old blood, so red it’s almost purple. For another, the shape is completely wrong. It’s not the curved lines of the Fraldarius crest, but something else. 

It hangs there in the air, and it looks - like a hooded figure with a rictus grin and a scythe. The same image etched on a silver coin he gave to a phantom boatman by a river. 

Felix gives Claude the same smile as the death’s head etched in the air above his head and says, “Next time, maybe they’ll be a challenge.” 

It’s not anything the old Felix wouldn’t have said. But somehow it doesn’t feel the same at all. 

***  
That night, Felix is all over Claude at camp; kissing him, touching him, pushing him down and fucking him hard. His cock is warm and hot, and for once so is the rest of him, and Claude doesn’t really want to think about why that is. 

After it's over, Felix sleeps without thrashing, without the restless begging to those he left behind when Claude dragged him back to the living. It seems a terrible price to pay for Felix’s peace of mind, but Claude thinks about the coins in his hand, the crest that bloomed like some sick flower in the air above them, and decides maybe he’s already paid it. 

***  
When they’re a day’s walk from the border, Felix’s dreams come back, worse than before. 

Claude takes a dagger from his pack and climbs on top of Felix, and sits there with it pressed to Felix’s throat. He waits, silently, for Felix to blink his eyes open in the dark; they’re a bright gleaming hellfire before they soften back to amber. 

“What,” Felix says, disgruntled. “Are you. Doing.” 

“I love you,” Claude says. “And what I did was wrong. You shouldn’t be here. And yes, I know you are. But I think I should send you back.” 

Felix says, “All right.” He tips his head back, bares his throat. “Go ahead.” He reaches up, fast as lightning, and grabs Claude’s wrist. Before Claude can draw in a breath to say -- something, anything -- Felix makes him drag the knife across his throat, and his skin opens -- 

\--and there’s blood, but only for a second. Just like the rain in Almyra hitting against hot stone in the summer, the blood evaporates into some dark miasma. When it fades, Felix’s throat is unmarked. 

“You remember how the Fell King was defeated, don’t you?” Felix asks, while Claude just stares at him in something like fascinated horror. “You took out his Elites, and it left him vulnerable.” 

“Are you saying -- what? There aren’t any. The Elites aren’t here, so --” 

“You’re stupid,” Felix says, but not without a gruff fondness, which is what’s so confusing about all of this. “You also know the answer. You should, anyway. You engraved it on the sword you gave me, when I turned eighteen. Remember?” 

_aim true, strike through the heart._

“When did you --” 

Felix shrugs. “I told you. In the place between.” 

“Hate to be, ah, crass about this,” Claude says. “But you don’t have a heart.” He taps the point of the dagger against the exit wound on Felix’s chest. 

“I do,” says Felix. He takes Claude’s wrist again, turns it so that the tip of the dagger is pressing against _Claude’s_ heart, racing fast beneath his breast. “It’s here.” 

Oh. 

“If I want to send you back,” Claude says, slowly. “I have to let you kill me.” 

“Someone has to kill you,” Felix says. “It doesn’t have to be me.” 

Claude thinks about this, about Shambhala, holding a knife to a child in desperation because _a man who is not afraid of death is the hardest foe to vanquish._ Claude is not afraid to die, not really, but what he _is_ afraid of is leaving the future unwritten, letting the peace he wants so badly fall to wayside. It’s just like Claude holding the sword on that poor child in Shambhala, desperate with grief, and a father who would have done anything to save her. 

All right. Claude’s smart. He can work this out. “This thing inside you. It’s whatever made Nemesis live, and it’s the -- same thing that was in our professor, Jeritza, back at the academy. The thing that made him the Death Knight. It’s in you, too.” 

“Yes,” Felix says. “I thought you’d figured that out already.” 

“Okay.” Claude thinks about this, sitting astride Felix, with the tip of the dagger still pressed to his heart. “But there was nothing of Nemesis left, as in, who he was. Because he’d been dead so long, and...what was it you said? People spoke of it, so he rotted from the inside?” 

“It is like a flame, and it consumes,” Felix says, in a voice not entirely his own. “Be careful, Claude,” he says, in one that is. 

“I know. Just, let me figure this out. So, everyone knew Nemesis was de--uh, no longer with us. Armies were shouting about it, that kind of thing. So it took whatever made him, him, away. Yeah?” 

“That’s not...entirely right,” Felix says, but then, “it’s not entirely wrong, either.” He snorts. “Also it’s not that you can’t say the word _dead_ , you just shouldn’t say it about _me_. Because then I’ll die, but I’ll still be there.” 

His eyes are starting to go red. Claude needs to do this, quickly. “Right. That was...you have an unexpected talent for creepy phrases I didn’t know about. Anyway, so, Jeritza. He was mostly himself, because people just knew him as a freak, not as...capital-D--” 

“He’s all sorts of dead,” Felix says. “You can say it about him. I thought you were smarter than this.” 

“Okay, Jeritza was Death Incarnate, but people just thought he was a freak so he could be himself, sort of? Is that right? We just have let people think you’re, well. Like he was.” 

Felix just stares at him. “This is your plan.” 

“Yeah, well, the second _you_ have a tactical outline for this, let me know,” Claude says, and Felix smiles, brief and quiet, his old smile. “So. We tell everyone you were injured, but didn’t want to go back to Fraldarius since …. Dimitri was killed. So we pretended I went mad with grief but really we took you to get healed, and now you’re better.” 

“People saw me after the battle, Claude.” Felix’s eyes are starting to burn again. “And you sort of...sane people don’t do what you did.” 

Claude can’t argue with that, so he doesn’t try. “No one in Almyra saw you … that way. Just...I know this is selfish, I’m terrible, but we can make this work. Let me get peace between Fodlan and Almyra. It’s going to be, uh, fairly hard to convince some people, they’ll probably try and kill me, you can take care fo that, yeah? So. I’ll let you do that, I would have done that anyway, and we won’t talk about it anymore. Then, when it’s time, we’ll both leave. Together.”

“You always were an optimist,” Felix says. 

“So are you okay with that?” Claude demands, a little desperate. He just needs a plan, needs to talk it out, make it make sense. Right. 

Felix shrugs and tosses the dagger away. “I wasn’t the one who woke you up sitting on your chest with a dagger to your throat asking if you wanted to die.” 

“Maybe you were biding your time?” 

Felix sighs. 

“Look,” Claude says, taking his face in his hands. “I love you. I want my peace, with Fodlan and Almyra, it’s all I’ve ever wanted, everything I’ve done...well, uh, with this one exception, has been for that. But I won’t let what’s left of you burn into nothing, either. This is how you are now, and we’ll work it out. But you should have your peace, too, Felix. I promise you’ll find it again.” He swallows, hard. “Even if I go somewhere else, without you, I...I’ll make sure you get back there.” 

“There’s no way you can possibly promise me that,” Felix says. 

“I know. I’m doing it anyway. I’m sort of into impossible, that’s how I ended up --” 

“Don’t say it,” Felix says, eyes glowing. 

“With you in the first place,” says Claude, smiling. He touches Felix’s face, watches the hellfire in his eyes fade. “I’ll make you happy. I promise. I know it was wrong to drag you back, but in the grand scheme of things, what’s eighty or so years with me? Especially since the heat won’t bother you in Almyra, anymore.” 

“You offend Death, I don’t even know how you do that,” Felix says, and pulls him down to kiss him. Felix’s mouth is cold when Claude kisses him, like the cold springwater of the oasis in Almyra in the heat of summer, or the first snow in Faerghus. Something bracing, maybe a little jarring, but you can get used to anything, after awhile.

“Promise me one thing,” Felix says. “When it’s time to go home. Really go home. Promise me it’ll be in Fraldarius, with the sound of the sea, and the snow on our faces. Swear it, and Death will walk beside you.” 

“Death definitely made you more dramatic,” Claude says, through his tears, smiling. “But I guess you needed something to even the score with me.” 

Felix rolls his eyes, and Claude thinks, for the first time, that maybe it will be okay. He takes up the dagger, wraps his hand and Felix’s around it and says, “I promise that on the day it’s time to go home, we’ll do it in Fraldarius, in the cold and the snow, you dramatic bastard. I’ll take this dagger in my heart for you just like you took that arrow for me, and then we’ll see what happens next.” 

“All right,” says Felix, and kisses him back. 

Above them, the sky lights up with the Crest of Riegan and the Crest of the Reaper, but they’re too busy kissing to see, and when they finally break apart, there’s nothing but the stars in an ink-black sky, and a future for them both, however strange it may be. 

***  
The listing for King Khalid I of Almyra in the _Encyclopedia of Ancient Almyran Rulers_ reads as follows: 

King Khalid I of Almyra was referred to with several sobriquets during his lifetime. His official sobriquet was _Silver-Tongued_ due to his tendency to solve political issues through rhetoric rather than warfare. Later generations would come to refer to him as _The Great Unifier_ since it was under his reign that Almyra opened its borders following the Fodlan Civil War. Less commonly, King Khalid was called _Snake-Charmer_ , though that was used almost exclusively by his political opponents/enemies and fell out of favor shortly after he took the crown. 

Among family, close friends and allies he was often referred to as _Khalid, Beloved of the Arrow Struck Heart_ , though there is some debate among scholars of ancient Almyran about the exact translation. Others have translated it as simply meaning _Khalid, Heart-Struck by the Beloved Arrow_ , since he was known to be a gifted archer. Khalid named his brother’s daughter as successor to the throne (see: Queen Aliyah I, “Dauntless”) and abdicated in her favor later in his life, where he retired to the family’s villa in the pine forests of Northern Almyra, near the sea, with a small retinue of loyal servants and the retainer who was always at his side. 

While much has been made of King Khalid’s reforms in both the political and social sphere, one of the most enduring mysteries of his reign is the identity of the man only known as the _King’s Shadow_ or more commonly, _King Khalid’s Luck_ , who it was said would eliminate any foes who opposed King Khalid during the somewhat turbulent early days of his reign. No surviving portraits of the man called “King Khalid’s Luck” exist, though there are many theories as to his identity (by those who believe he existed at all, which is certainly not proven given the lack of records on the matter). 

Some wilder theories as to his identity include; the spirit of the ancient King Nemesis (whose ghost was reported to have been seen in the final Battle of Garreg Mach), an unlucky restless ghost of a fallen soldier, and a Fodlan noble who was said to have been Khalid’s lover before and during the war. The latter theory is by far the most popular, though it originated from a melodrama called _The King and the Duke Who Loved Him Beyond The Fields of War and Past the Gates of Death_ , based on a popular novel in post-Unification Fodlan of the same name by author A. Ubert. This book has been adapted many times over the years, with several modern works of film, literature, and even a popular video game series based on it. 

Khalid’s later years are mostly undocumented given his abdication in favor of his niece Aliyah, with the only notable reappearance of his name in the records having to do with his death. The stories say he left Almyra late in life, moving with only a handful of servants and a loyal retainer from Northern Almyra to a derelict property on the coast of Faerghus (formerly belonging to the defunct noble house Fraldarius). Local gossip asserted that the loyal retainer dismissed the staff and said they would no longer be needed, and not to come back until three days after the first snow. When the Almyran servants returned as bid, they found the windows in King Khalid’s room open to the cold sea air, and King Khalid, then around ninety-six years of age, dead with a dagger through his heart and his loyal retainer nowhere to be found. When the Faerghan constable asked the Almyran servants if they suspected foul play on the part of the retainer (who was never found) they were said to have pointed to the old king, who died “covered in snow, in the sea air, with a smile on his face.” Supposedly there were two silver coins in his hand, which while not an Almyran custom, was a common practice in Ancient Morfis. While the practice never caught on in Almyra, following King Khalid’s death, it became part of Almyran wedding custom wherein each person being married held a silver coin in their left hand. The reason is unknown, but it is said to have started with Aliyah I’s son, Khalid II, who was said to have been given his great-uncle’s private diaries (none extant). 

King Khalid’s body was returned to the capital city of Almyra, and his niece Aliyah followed his express wishes that his body be burned on a pyre rather than shrouded and placed in the Tomb of Kings. This is out of custom enough to be referenced in the Almyran work _The Myths of the Old Kings_ , written a hundred years or so after Khalid I’s death and based on oratory traditions. It has this to say about beloved King Khalid’s funerary rites: 

_When the torch was placed to the wood, it is said that day a great sight was witnessed by all who gathered to bid farewell to King Khalid I -- a bright light of two sigils entwined in the smoke of the pyre, a crescent moon and a skull, and an arrow through both. And The Dauntless rose from her throne and pointed to the sky, crying, look, behold, as the king’s luck has finally carried him* home, to the peaceful place that awaits him* beyond._

*early translations render this line as _look, behold, as the king’s luck has finally carried **them** home, to the peaceful place that awaits **them** beyond._ Given the funeral was only for King Khalid I, it’s thought a mistranslation and has been corrected in all subsequent translations.

**Author's Note:**

> Felix's name means "Lucky" in Latin, hence his sobriquet :D


End file.
